Bethan Jenkins AC/AM Blog

I’m at Plaid Conference early at UWIC as Aileen Campbell MSP and Gareth Finn, Convenor of the SNP CND group are staying with me and Aileen is doing the press conference this morning. I’m sitting in the cafe, but as you walk in there is a band playing- nothing too heavy for this time of the morning I hasten to add! I haven’t got such a frantic day today bar the fact that I have a speech to deliver around 12 ish and a few Cymru X events to attend.

Yesterday was really good. I enjoyed chairing the blogging event, and there were plenty of interesting questions on why politicians blog, are journalists lazy if they depend too heavily on stories from blogs, the bitchiness and personal attacks bloggers endure, the language one chooses to blog in, the development of online news… Huw Thomas aka  Chanticleer described himself as the ‘reaper’ of the blogosphere- hunting out a good story, and Iain Dale made a strong point about the fact that if you have 200 or 2000 followers of your blog, the one with more followers doesn’t necessarily make the better blog! Heledd Fychan noted her experience of blogging and the fine line between the personal and private life of a blogger, and John Dixon talked about a conference on the future that he attended that suggested that blogs would soon be out of date. hmmm…

I hope we can do a session on blogging/ use of technology at our annual conference in September, as it really engaged those who attended. 

The other event I chaired was one with Rathbone Cymru where 4 girls talked about their experience of the education system, and how they were not engaged in school. I was angry to find out that one girl was diagnosed with dyslexia at age 7 but that nothing at all was done about it by her teachers or support staff. I’ve got quite a few ideas to take back to the Assembly from them…

The Karaoke was good in the evening last night- a first for a Plaid event. It was quite surreal however that Dafydd Iwan sung karaoke to his own songs! 

Anyway, I’ll blog later when the speeches and main events start….I have my laptop with me today so this won’t be the last you’ll hear of me!